In his first season as head coach in 1947, Wilkinson led Oklahoma to a 7–2–1 record and a share of the conference championship, the first of 13 consecutive Big Six/Seven/Eight Conference titles. Ultimately, Wilkinson became one of the most celebrated college coaches of all time. His teams captured national championships in 1950, 1955, and 1956, and they amassed a 145–29–4 (.826) overall record.

The centerpiece of his time in Norman was a 47-game winning streak from 1953 to 1957, an NCAA Division I record that still stands. It has been moderately threatened only three times: by the Toledo (35 wins, 1969–1971), Miami (FL) (34 wins, 2000–2003), and USC (34 wins, 2003–2005). Earlier, the Sooners ran off 31 consecutive wins from 1948 to 1950. Apart from two losses in 1951, Wilkinson's Sooners did not lose more than one game per season for 11 years between 1948 and 1958, going 107–8–2 over that period. His teams also went 12 consecutive seasons (1947–1958) without a loss in conference play, a streak which has never been seriously threatened. Wilkinson did not suffer his first conference loss until 1959 against Nebraska, his 79th conference game.

While coaching at OU, Wilkinson began writing a weekly newsletter to alumni during the season, to keep them interested in Sooner football. He also became the first football coach to host his own television show. He and Michigan State University coach Duffy Daugherty partnered to sponsor a series of clinics for high school coaches nationwide. Later, they turned their clinics into a profitable business.[2]

Following the 1963 season, his 17th at Oklahoma, Wilkinson retired from coaching at the age of 47. Along with Bennie Owen, Barry Switzer and Bob Stoops, he is one of four football coaches to win over 100 games at the University of Oklahoma. No other college football program has had more than three coaches who accomplished the feat.

While at Oklahoma, Wilkinson served on the President's Council on Physical Fitness from 1961 to 1964. He designed 11 floor exercises for schoolchildren that were incorporated into the song "Chicken Fat",[3] the theme song for President John F. Kennedy's youth fitness program,[4] which was widely used in school gymnasiums across the country in the 1960s and 1970s.[5]

In February, 1964, Wilkinson announced that he would enter a special election to replace his friend, the late Robert S. Kerr, as U. S. Senator from Oklahoma. He had already resigned his position as head coach of the Oklahoma University Sooners.[a] Politicians and the Oklahoma press debated whether he was qualified to become a U. S. Senator, though all seemed to agree that his popularity as a cultural icon gave him an important edge. Easily winning the Republican primary, Wilkinson became the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in 1964, at which point he legally changed his first name to Bud, but narrowly lost to DemocratFred R. Harris, then a State Senator in Oklahoma. Both parties involved political heavyweights from out of state to campaign for their candidates. Republicans invited former President Eisenhower and SenatorBarry Goldwater.[b] Wilkinson's Republican advisers brought in Senator Strom Thurmond to appeal to ultra-conservative voters in Little Dixie, which had recently turned reliably Republican. That effort backfired.[c] In the 1964 General Election, Republican presidential nominee, SenatorBarry Goldwater lost to incumbent President Lyndon Baines Johnson 55-45 percent in Oklahoma. Through 2016, Johnson is the last Democrat to carry Oklahoma in a presidential election.[7] Wilkinson served as Republican National Committeeman from Oklahoma, and was considered for the position of committee chairman by Richard Nixon but was not selected.[citation needed] Wilkinson entertained seeking the other Oklahoma U.S. Senate seat in 1968, but he did not run, and the position went to former GovernorHenry Bellmon, also a Republican.

Wilkinson was married to the former Mary Schifflet in 1938, with whom he had two sons, Pat and Jay. They divorced in 1975. A year later, he married Donna O'Donnahue, 33 years his junior, who survived him in death.

^According to reporter Andrew McGregor, the deaths of Senator Kerr, President John F. Kennedy and his own brother, all during the previous year, the former coach wanted to pursue, "...what he considered to be a more impactful and significant career."[6]

^ Illness made Eisenhower miss the occasion, so his former Vice President Richard Nixon served as substitute. Harris supporters got President Lyndon Johnson to make an appearance, as well as several other national Democrats.[6]

^Harris later said, "my campaign got an extra benefit from Senator Thurmond's Oklahoma visit … Thurmond wound up scaring the daylights out of even a lot of conservative white voters with his jingoist speeches, advocating for the escalation of the American war effort in Vietnam."[6]